For most people, interest in the doings of our
forefathers in India dates from our wars with the French in the middle
of the eighteenth century. Before then their lives are generally supposed
to have been spent in monotonous trade dealings in pepper and calico, from
which large profits were earned for their masters in England, while their
principal excitements were derived from drinking and quarrelling among
themselves. Little account has been taken of the tremendous risks and difficulties
under which the trade was maintained, the losses that were suffered, and
the dangers that were run by the Company's servants from the moment they
left the English Channel. The privations and dangers of the voyage to India
were alone sufficient to deter all but the hardiest spirits, and the debt
we owe to those who, by painful effort, won a footing for our Indian trade,
is deserving of more recognition than it has received.

Scurvy, shortness of water, and mutinous crews
were to be reckoned on in every voyage; navigation was not a science but
a matter of rule and thumb, and shipwreck was frequent; while every coast
was inhospitable. Thus, on the 4th September, 1715, the Nathaniel,
having sent a boat's crew on shore near Aden in search of water, the men
allowed themselves to be inveigled inland by treacherous natives, who fell
upon them and murdered twelve out of fourteen who had landed from the ship.
Such an occurrence now would be followed by a visit from a man-of-war to
punish the murderers. Two hundred years ago it was only an incident to
set down in the ship's log-book. But all such outrages and losses were
small in comparison with those to which traders were exposed at the hands
of pirates.

It is difficult to realize, in these days, what
a terrible scourge piracy was to the Indian trade, two hundred years ago.
From the moment of losing sight of the Lizard till the day of casting anchor
in the port of destination an East India ship was never safe from attack,
with the chance of slavery or a cruel death to crew and passengers, in
case of capture. From Finisterre to Cape Verd the Moorish pirates made
the seas unsafe, sometimes venturing into the mouth of the Channel to make
a capture. Farther south, every watering-place on the African coast was
infested by the English and French pirates who had their headquarters in
the West Indies. From the Cape of Good Hope to the head of the Persian
Gulf, from Cape Comorin to Sumatra, every coast was beset by English, French,
Dutch, Danish, Portuguese, Arab, Malay or other local pirates. In the Bay
of Bengal alone, piracy on a dangerous scale was practically unknown.

There was no peace on the ocean. The sea was a
vast No Man's domain, where every man might take his prey. Law and order
stopped short at low-water mark. The principle that traders might claim
protection and vengeance for their wrongs from their country, had not yet
been recognized, and they sailed the seas at their own risk. Before the
close of the seventeenth century the buccaneers had passed away, but their
depredations, in pursuit of what they called "free trade," were of a different
nature from those of the pirates who succeeded them. Buccaneer exploits
were confined to the Spanish main, where they ravaged and burnt Spanish
settlements on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, moving with large forces
by sea and land. According to Esquemeling, Morgan sailed on his expedition
against Panama with thirty-seven sail and two thousand fighting men, besides
mariners and boys.

But the Spanish alone were the objects of their
attack. So long as Spain claimed a monopoly of South American trade, it
was the business of Spain alone to keep the marauders away; other Governments
were not disposed to assist her. Hardly had the last of the buccaneers
disappeared from the Western seas, when a more lawless race of rovers appeared,
extending their operations into the Indian Ocean, acting generally in single
ships, plundering vessels of every nationality, though seldom attacking
places on shore.

Of these men, chiefly English, the most notorious
were Teach, Every, Kidd, Roberts, England, and Tew; but there were many
others less known to fame, who helped almost to extinguish trade between
Europe, America, and the East. Some idea of the enormous losses caused
by them may be gathered from the fact that Bartholomew Roberts alone was
credited with the destruction of four hundred trading vessels in three
years. In a single day he captured eleven vessels, English, French, and
Portuguese, on the African coast.

War in Europe, and the financial exhaustion that
ensued, rendered it almost impossible for the maritime powers to put an
effective check on the pirates either in the East or the West. With peace
their numbers increased by the conversion of privateersmen into freebooters.
Slaver, privateersman, and pirate were almost interchangeable terms. At
a time when every main road in England was beset by highwaymen, travellers
by sea were not likely to escape unmolested. But the chief cause of their
immunity lay in the fact that it was the business of nobody in particular
to act against them, while they were more or less made welcome in every
undefended port.

They passed themselves off as merchantmen or slavers,
though their real character was well known, but they paid royally for what
they wanted; and as gold, silver, and jewels were the principal booty from
which they made their 'dividend,' many a rich bale of spices and merchandise
went to purchase the good will of their friends on shore, who in return
supplied their wants, and gave them timely information of rich prizes to
be looked for, or armed ships to be avoided. They prided themselves on
being men of honour in the way of trade; enemies to deceit, and only robbing
in their own way. The Malabar coast was scandalized when Kidd broke the
rule, and tricked or bullied people out of supplies. Officials high in
authority winked at their doings, from which they drew a profit; and when
armed squadrons were sent to look for them, the commanders were not always
averse to doing business with the freebooters.

The greatest sufferers among European traders in
India were the English; for not only were the greater number of pirates
of English blood, but pirate captains of other nationalities often sailed
under English colours. The native officials, unable to distinguish the
rogues from the honest traders, held the East India Company's servants
responsible for the misdeeds of the piccaroons from whom they suffered
so grievously. Still, whatever their nationality might chance to be, it
is fair to say that the generality of them were courageous rascals and
splendid seamen who, with their large crews, handled their ships better
than any merchantmen could do. When a pirate ship was cast away on a desolate
coast, they built themselves another; the spirit of the sea was in their
veins; whether building and rigging a ship, or sailing and fighting her,
they could do everything that the most skilful seamen of the age could
do. As was said half a century later of La Bourdonnais, himself a true
corsair in spirit, their knowledge in mechanics rendered them capable of
building a ship from the keel; their skill in navigation, of conducting
her to any part of the globe; and their courage, of fighting against any
equal force.

Their lives were a continual alternation between
idleness and extreme toil, riotous debauchery and great privation, prolonged
monotony and days of great excitement and adventure. At one moment they
were revelling in unlimited rum, and gambling for handfuls of gold and
diamonds; at another, half starving for food and reduced to a pint of water
a day under a tropical sun. Yet the attractions of the life were so great
that men of good position took to piracy. Thus, Major Stede Bonnet of Barbados,
master of a plentiful fortune and a gentleman of good reputation, fitted
out a sloop and went a-pirating, for which he was hanged, together with
twenty-two of his crew, in November, 1718. Even women, like Anne Bonny
and Mary Read, turned pirates and handled sword and pistol. Desperate,
reckless, and lawless, they were filled with the spirit of adventure, and
were the forerunners of the men that Hawke, Nelson, and Dundonald led to
victory.

Long after they had disappeared from the seas,
the Indian trade continued to be exposed to the ravages of native pirates,
who were not finally coerced into good behaviour till well into the nineteenth
century. Of the European pirates Kidd, the most ignoble of them all, is
alone remembered, while the name of Angria is only recalled in connection
with the destruction of Gheriah by Watson and Clive. The long half-century
of amateur warfare waged by Bombay against the Angrian power is dismissed
in a few words by our Indian historians, and the expeditions sent forth
by Boone against Angrian strongholds are passed over in silence. An account
of some of them is given in Clement Downing's curious little book "Indian
Wars," valuable as the relation of an eye-witness; but the work, published
in 1737, is inaccessible to the general reader, besides shewing many omissions
and inaccuracies.

The early records of the East India Company have
furnished the foundation on which this neglected chapter of our Indian
history has been compiled. If the Company's servants appear at times in
an unfavourable light, the conditions of their service must be considered,
while the low standard of conduct prevailing in England two hundred years
ago must not be forgotten. They were traders, not administrators, and the
charter under which the Company traded was of very insecure duration. Twice
the Crown broke faith with them, and granted charters to rival associations.
As the stability of the Company became assured, the conduct of its servants
improved.

It is not intended in these pages to give an exhaustive
account of all the pirates who haunted the Indian seas, but to present
some idea of the perils that beset the Indian trade-- perils that have
so entirely passed away that their existence is forgotten.

Scattered among the monotonous records of the Company's
trade are many touches of human interest. Along with the details relating
to sugar, pepper, and shipping, personal matters affecting the Company's
servants are set down; treating of their quarrels, their debts, and, too
often, of their misconduct, as ordinary incidents in the general course
of administration. At times a bright light is turned on some individual,
who relapses into obscurity and is heard of no more, while the names of
others emerge again and again, like a coloured thread woven in the canvas;
showing how much romance there was in the lives of the early traders. One
such
thread I have followed in the account of Mrs. Gyfford, from her first arrival
in India till her final disappearance in the Court of Chancery, showing
the vicissitudes and dangers to which an Englishwoman in India was exposed
two hundred years ago.

To Mr. William Foster, of the India Office, I am
especially indebted for aid in directing my attention to old documents
that would otherwise have escaped notice, and who has generously placed
at my disposal some of the results of his own researches into the history
of the Company in the seventeenth century, as yet unpublished.

My thanks are also due to Sir Ernest Robinson for
permitting me to use his picture of an engagement with Mahratta ships,
as a frontispiece.